Euro 24 Football Language Phrase (Day 19): Paw the ball away
In this football language post we look at the phrase ‘paw the ball away‘ after Turkey’s thrilling win over Austria in their last-16 match from the 2024 Euros. Don’t forget we have hundreds more explanations of football language in our football glossary and we also have a page full of football cliches. If you have questions or comments about this or any other phrase then email us at: admin@languagecaster.com.
Paw the ball away
The final last-16 match in Leipzig between Turkey and Austria was a thriller with the dark horses of previous tournaments (Turkey) defeating this year’s dark horses (Austria) 2-1. The Turkish side scored in the first minute and then doubled their lead early in the second half before the Austrians pulled one back to set up a thrilling final 20 minutes. In the very last moments of stoppage time the Austrian forward Christoph Baumgartner saw his downward header brilliantly kept out of the goal by the Turkish keeper Mert Gunok. It was an amazing save that many likened to Gordon Banks’ save against Brazil in the 1970 World Cup as he dived at pace to tip or push the ball away. In the Guardian report they said that the keeper ‘pawed the ball up and wide‘ and to paw the ball in football means to somehow get a hand to the ball to stop the ball from going in. The prepositions used with the verb often shows where the ball went after being touched by the keeper: paw away (away from the goal); paw up and over (after the ball was stopped it moved up and then over the crossbar) and in this example, ‘paw up and wide’ as the ball was moved up by the keeper with the ball eventually going wide of the goal.
- Example: How Mert Gunok, the Turkey goalkeeper, reacted to paw the ball up and wide is a thing of wonder… (Guardian.co.uk, July 2 2024)
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